Whaddya Mean, "America is not a Christian Nation"?

[COMMENT: A bipartisan group of 25 members
of the House of Representatives earlier this month submitted H.Res. 397, which
calls on Congress to affirm "the rich spiritual and religious history of our
nation's founding and subsequent history" and to designate the first week of May
as America's Spiritual Heritage Week for 'the appreciation of and education on
America's history of religious faith.'
See YouTube at
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98369

Here is an email on the subject I sent out to some friends and
family. For whole article at WorldNetDaily, see
below.

See also below, my response to Obama's comments about having
values available to everybody.
E. Fox]

I hope the text will be published abroad. The
history is unassailable. The Supreme Court openly and unabashedly supported
that stance that America was founded as a Christian nation right up into the
1940's. Then it began to turn badly. The ax fell in 1962 with the
Engel vs. Vitale decision, throwing prayer out of schools (the real problem
is not prayer in schools, but government in schools).

That was the first Supreme Court decision in history
with no precedent cited, for the simple reason that there was no
precedent to cite. (A precedent is a previous court decision on the same
topic -- which is quoted by a later decision to give support to itself.)
The Court made up the nonsense whole cloth that they could dismiss God from
His sovereignty over the whole of the cosmos -- well at least over the US
of A. And in doing so they scuttled the very foundation of our government
-- namely that our freedoms and rights are inalienable because they
come from God, not from civil government.

Civil government cannot give us our rights (or
obligations), it can only take them away (in practice, not in reality). The
only thing civil government can legitimately do about those rights
(and obligations) is to administer them according to the law and grace of
God. It cannot legitimately change them, as it is routinely trying to do
today. And that means that all of its attempts to do so are illegal and are
to be ignored. It is acting beyond it capacities.

The logical implication of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution
is that God is sovereign over all governments, no exceptions (that is the
meaning of sovereignty, is it not?). And it is the task of Judeo-Christians
to let the world know that. Our public and political freedoms come from God
just as do our personal salvation freedoms. That is part of the Good News.

Our founding fathers and the legal scholars of the
1700's in both England and Colonial America understood that the law of God
stands over all civil law, and is indeed the only possible foundation of
legitimacy for civil government. See William Blackstone at
http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Pl/Cnst/BlackstonLaw.htm
Blackstone is the primary British legal author which was read by all of the
colonial lawyers and patriots -- as well as in England itself.

Yeah, I know, I am being impolite and unkind for
suggesting that one view is right and that not everyone can have their way.
But that is the nature of truth. Sometimes, it is either/or, not both/and.
2+2=4, and nothing else.

If I am wrong, would it not be rather easy to show
that I am wrong? i.e. by pointing to reliable American history which tells
the opposite story from mine? Should it not be rather easy to quote the
founding fathers and others later (eg, other Supreme Court decisions?)-- to
prove our respective points? If I am wrong, I really do want to know. I
do not want to be promoting falsehoods. I would hope that all of us can
say that.

A bipartisan group of 25 members of the House of
Representatives earlier this month submitted H.Res. 397, which calls on
Congress to affirm "the rich spiritual and religious
history of our nation's founding and subsequent
history" and to designate the first week of May as America's Spiritual
Heritage Week for "the appreciation of and education on America's history of
religious faith."

Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., specifically challenged
the president's claims that America is not a Christian nation in a news
conference announcing the bill immediately following last week's National
Day of Prayer observance.

"The overwhelming evidence suggests that this
nation was born and birthed with Judeo-Christian principles," Forbes told
reporters, "and I would challenge anybody to tell me that point in time when
we ceased to be so, because it doesn't exist."

The bill itself cites over 70 historical
references and quotes from past presidents, Founding Fathers and Supreme
Court decisions as proof that Judeo-Christian principles have been the
foundation of our nation.

H.Res. 397, which has now accumulated 41
cosponsors, not only calls on Congress to affirm the nation's spiritual
heritage, but also resolves that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects,
in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure or purposely
omit such history from our nation's public buildings and educational
resources."

The full text of H.Res. 397 begins by asserting that
"religious faith was not only important in official American life during the
periods of discovery, exploration, colonization and growth but has also been
acknowledged and incorporated into all three branches of the federal government
from their very beginning."

The bill's long list of "whereas" affirmations
begins with the statement, "Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident
fact in a unanimous ruling declaring 'This is a religious people. … From the
discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making
this affirmation.'"

Among the many historical
proofs included in the bill were the following:

Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a national
shortage of '"Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public
worship of God in our churches," announced that they "desired to have a
Bible printed under their care and by their encouragement" and therefore
ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported;

Whereas in 1782, Congress pursued a plan to
print a Bible that would be "a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the
use of schools' and therefore approved the production of the first English
language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional
endorsement that 'the United States in Congress assembled … recommend this
edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States";

Whereas the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the
Revolution and established America as an independent [nation] begins with
the appellation "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity";

Whereas in 1795, during construction of the
Capitol, a practice was instituted whereby "public worship is now regularly
administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock";

Whereas in 1789, Congress, in the midst of
framing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, passed the first federal
law touching education,
declaring, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good
government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education
shall forever be encouraged";

Whereas by 1867, the church at the Capitol
was the largest church in Washington, D.C., with up to
2,000 people a week attending Sunday service in the Hall of the House;

Whereas in 1853, the United States Senate
declared that the Founding Fathers "had no fear or jealousy of religion
itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people. … They did not
intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action
of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy";

Whereas in 1854, the United States House of
Representatives declared "It [religion] must be considered as the foundation
on which the whole structure rests. … Christianity, in its general
principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the
purity and permanence of free institutions";

Whereas President John Adams, one of only 2
signers of the Bill of Rights and First Amendment, declared "As the safety
and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the
protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment
of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to
Him";

Whereas President Andrew Jackson declared that the Bible
"is the rock on which our Republic rests";

Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt not
only led the Nation in a six-minute prayer during D-Day on June 6, 1944, but
he also declared, "If we will not prepare to give all that we have and all
that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to
destruction";

Whereas President Dwight D. Eisenhower
declared, "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an
American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the
most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the Founding Fathers of America
saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be," in a declaration
later repeated with approval by President Gerald Ford;

Whereas the United States Supreme Court has
declared throughout the course of our Nation's history
that the United States is "a Christian country," "a Christian nation," "a
Christian people," "a religious people whose institutions presuppose a
Supreme Being," and that "we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to
religion"

Following the lengthy "whereas" section, the bill
then calls on the House to resolve to affirm the spiritual history of the
nation, reject efforts to cleanse that religious history and establish America's
Spiritual History Week to appreciate and educate the citizenry on the country's
foundations in faith.

Forbes was joined in announcing the bill's
introduction by several members of Congress who spoke in favor of the bill,
religious leaders like Dr. James and Shirley Dobson, professional football
player Shaun Alexander, and leaders of several national education, policy and
advocacy groups.

"We should acknowledge this and realize that when
we're formulating policies from the statehouse to the Senate floor to the White
House, we've got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are
accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith
community," wrote Obama.

Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who serves as
co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus with Rep. Forbes, spoke at the press
conference announcing H.Res. 397 and asserted to the contrary that it's "high
time" the nation recognize and affirm the "integral part of our nation's
history" that Christianity has played.

McIntyre said Americans don't know, for example,
that even Ben Franklin, who "wasn't known as the most spiritual of the Founding
Fathers," nonetheless looked to God as the only hope for our country:

"Ben Franklin," McIntyre said, "stood up and
called the assembly of delegates to prayer, because, he said, 'Scripture teaches
us that if a sparrow can't fall to the ground without his notice, is it likely
that an empire will rise without his aid?' And if we don't first go to prayer,
he said, 'We'll be no more successful then the builders of Babel.'"

What would "values accessible
to every citizen", as recommended by Obama, mean? Is Obama saying
something coherent? Does he understand the logic of that for which he is
asking?

On one hand, the remarks seem
obviously and patently true. In colonial days, we had almost all British
and mostly Christian citizens. Today, as he says, we have Jews, Hindus,
atheists, Buddhists, and others. So, he wants to construct a moral
consensus which will apply to all of those groups and do the job which a
morality is to do.

We also have skinheads, neo-nazis,
Christian and other fundamentalists, we have persons with violent strategies,
etec. There is no possiblity of combining. We have terrorists coming
across our borders. we have

Govt cannot doit, only a
freemarket of ideas, of economics, under a limited govt under God.

Only the Biblical union of
love and law can do it. See article on govt and love in MM.